Insights: How To Stand Out When Looking For Work

How do you stand out when it comes to applying for or pitching for work? What are companies looking for? What are the common mistakes?

I was a guest on the Wilbur Smith podcast the other day (in itself quite a random tale) and, weirdly, I ended up chatting about one of the first jobs I ever had: Saturday lad at Stretford Carpet Centre on Chester Road, circa 1990.

My job was basically to carry rolls of carpet and lino around, receive endless dead arms from Joey the co-owner, and head to McDonald's each lunchtime to get the Big Macs in.

We also played a lot of darts. And I read a lot of Wilbur Smith, Joey's favourite writer. Hence the anecdote on the podcast.

I got sacked in the end, after being gulled by a punter who got me to carry a roll of lino to his car after telling me he'd paid. Needless to say, he hadn't.

I was 14, and my close pal Chris Moran, who I grew up with in Manchester, is STILL ribbing me about this.

Anyway, it wasn't a bad job. Certainly better than the job I had after that, at JD Platt the Butcher in Stretford Arndale, which involved making dog food from offcuts of old, scraggy meat, and scrubbing the deep freezes. That particular gig made the meat locker training scene in Rocky look glamorous.

And it was definitely more enjoyable than the few years I did working the close shifts at various McDonald's around the North West before everywhere got gentrified. Let's just say our branch in Stretford got tasty so frequently they installed a panic button that linked directly to the riot police. Not fun for a shithouse like me.

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Perhaps it was these experiences that made me spend the subsequent 30 odd years trying everything I could NOT to get a 'proper' job.

Or maybe it was the influence of friends such as Chris Moran and Ed Leigh, for example, who from an early age seemed to have worked out how to avoid 'regular' work, something which made a great impression on me at the time.

Wherever it came from, I've managed it thus far, and at this point have been lucky enough to make a weird little living doing my weird little none-job for almost 30 years now.

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Maybe this is why one of the commonest questions I get from listeners and readers today is this one, below.

“How do I get a more interesting job doing something I’m passionate about?”

Providing answers to questions such as this is one of the reasons I set up Insights, my new Looking Sideways section, exclusively for my paid subscribing community.

Welcome to Insights

And it is, of course, a huge strand of the conversations I've conducted on my podcast Looking Sideways with everybody from surfing astronaut Christina Koch (now THERE'S a hell of a career path) to legendary skateboarding film-maker Stacy Peralta.

During my own career, I've ended up working with and hiring a LOT of people. I've also spent years pitching people, and trying to extract budgets from brands.

And, as we head into another round of hiring at All Conditions Media, it got me thinking about what I've learned about the whole weird process of applying for a job, or pitching for something, the most common mistakes that people make, and some incredibly simple ways to stand out from the crowd that nobody seems to be aware of.

Insights gang, this one's for you….